ANNUALS

This was not supposed to be our endorsement piece for the November — look a few slots below for that — but things got out of hand. Greg was not able to finish that endorsements on time due to “life happening,” and so people started looking for the next best thing: his article on who had filed back in August, which also contained some information about who we like. It got over 3500 hits, mostly in the six weeks before the election. Even after we published the actual endorsement list, even after we referred people there to the correct post, we still could not turn this damned thing off. (We blame the Russians for this.)

“Friend of the blog” Carol Levers had not written for us before, but she came back from her experience as a Sanders Delegate to the Democratic National Convention with quite a story to tell. Over 3,000 of you read it.

Our “Tyler in Irvine” ripped his homeboy a new orifice before the OCGOP delegate elections — once you’re established as a writer here you get some leeway over your topics — but Lalloway also still won. (V – the REAL reason this story got so many hits was the amazing comments section, where Jeff jumped in to defend himself and his multiple Irvine Republican enemies jumped in to trash him, and the rest of us, Democrats and others from across the county, were able to just kick back and watch, laugh, eat popcorn, puff on a bong, all of that good stuff.)

Vern’s title was a metaphor — and this was the “tamed-down” version. (Original and better version – Chris Epting Sends Suicide Bomber into Vern Concert.) Still, reading it gives a good sense of the dynamics of HB local politics this year.

By Vern. OJB’s greatest regret, among political outcomes that we conceivably could have helped accomplish, is Diana Carey’s loss. Westminster now hops on to the greased skid that Costa Mesa just departed, downhill to insanity.

By Greg. OJB’s greatest satisfaction, among political outcomes that we conceivably could have helped accomplish, is a tie between Newman’s victory and the results of the Anaheim City Council races. We’re not sure what to do about having a State Senator this decent and good, but we’ll figure something out.

Part of what seemed even to Greg like an interminable series — but we have it on good authority that various candidates do watch our updates as they decide about where and whether to run, so we’ll try to keep doing them.

Fullerton’s Tony Bushala showed up to let everyone know that he was going to smack around Sukhee Kang as long as he was in the SD-29. People from out of the district didn’t get this, but those of us up here did: if Kang had won the primary, Bushala was going to rip him apart and Ling-Ling would have won. (He is no fan of Ling-Ling Chang, but this was the Great Park story coming to his own backyard — and how could he have been able to resist it?) This was a significant shot across the bow.

By Greg. More people should vote in primaries. And yes, we should get these guides out earlier.

PERENNIALS

Every year, some stories retain readership despite having been written earlier. The two top stories on this list were our two top stories of the entire year. The second one, had it been written a few months later, would have topped our “annuals” list.

Vern’s controversial piece is still probably the top source of news for this story about what he describes as a grave injustice. And people are still very interested in the case. Just thought you should know. (V: Jesus’ dad is pretty sure that Proposition 57, which he fought hard for, will let his son out a lot earlier.)

By Greg. Brett Murdock finished about where Jay Chen did in his own 2012 against Royce, but he did it with far less money behind him. Like Chen, he kept Royce from being as active outside of the district as he might have liked, which is its own kind of victory. The continued pre-election interest in this post was unexpected and unrelenting. What Murdock — who had the second-best use of campaign signs this year (after Newman’s) — got for his trouble is this: a much higher profile, a clear reputation that includes being unbought — and a very good poll of how well voters in the largely overlapping 4th Supervisorial District liked him. If he runs for that seat in 2018, he’ll unburden himself of Yorba Linda and add almost all of the largely Democratic in Anaheim flatlands. No other potential candidate — including the disgraced Jordan Brandman — starts with the same advantage. Now, will he run? That is an unwritten story for another day.

The managers of this blog are not believers in astrology — but we have to admit that what is written here, which was published on AUGUST 18 2015 and not substantially revised thereafter — is uncanny. TOJO should be made Trump’s Court Astrologer. Start a writing campaign for this or something.

Inge Scott, now of somewhere in eastern Northern California, wrote some of the most powerful and popular stories ever on this blog. This one got the most readers this past year. (She also did the first serious general interest article on TPP — which, as you may have heard, eventually became a thing.) Herearelinks to Inge’sOJBwritings on TPP, starting on June 19, 2012!

And this, by Larry Gilbert from 2010, is the second-ranked one from the ancient regime.

Special Cultivars

We have a few “honorable mentions” that we’d like to remember from this year, mostly about politics in a year filled with consequential political news. Some of them helped change history. The first five are from Vern, though they have been hand-selected by Greg.

Cynthia’s piece got a little over 65o views — but may have had a huge effect on Anaheim’s future. The video of Lodge sucker punching a guy in a hotel lobby (about the details of which he later lied under oath) preceded by not all that long the Atlas Group and others dropping their endorsements of Lodge, in some cases switching to Barnes. Disney backed the wrong horse in District 1 — and so lost control of the City.

We could go on, but we’ll leave it here with Greg’s tribute to Amin David — who, in the year he died, was still arguably the most significant individual in Orange County politics. The changes, as opposed to the continuity, in Orange County largely can be traced to actions that Amin took to awaken Latino voters in his city. That gets you the election of Jose Moreno and arguably, given the cooperation with Tom Tait, of Denise Barnes. Those votes carried Sharon Quirk-Silva back into office and led Josh Newman to break new ground to the north. If Amin David was a “scaffold,” a metaphor largely saluted in the wake of this tribute, he left behind him a strong structure. Not a completed one, of course — in politics, there is no such thing as “completed.” But still: strong.

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose worker's rights and government accountability attorney, residing in northwest Brea. General Counsel of CATER, the Coalition of Anaheim Taxpayers for Economic Responsibility, a non-partisan group of people sick of local corruption.
Deposed as Northern Vice Chair of DPOC in April 2014 when his anti-corruption and pro-consumer work in Anaheim infuriated the Building Trades and Teamsters in spring 2014, who then worked with the lawless and power-mad DPOC Chair to eliminate his internal oversight.
Occasionally runs for office to challenge some nasty incumbent who would otherwise run unopposed. (Someday he might pick a fight with the intent to win rather than just dent someone. You'll know it when you see it.) He got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012 and in 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002.
None of his pre-putsch writings ever spoke for the Democratic Party at the local, county, state, national, or galactic level, nor do they now.
A family member co-owns a business offering campaign treasurer services to Democratic candidates and the odd independent. He is very proud of her. He doesn't directly profit from her work and it doesn't affect his coverage. (He does not always favor her clients, though she might hesitate to take one that he truly hated.)
He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.)

Interesting and telling that the school district elections drew the most views. Sad that your endorsements meant less than nothing in those cases, especially in Santa Ana, where Greg’s anti union stance continues to insure that his self marginalizing political position in Orange County is as solid as the rock of Gibraltar. Teachers, parents, students and staff members can fondly recall Pedroza and see his reflection in the new OJ.

No, Urizen, that post wasn’t #1 because it was about School Board and Special Districts, It was #1 because people thought that it had our general endorsements for the November election.

I think that Orange County has had some of the best Labor leaders that I’ve ever seen — people in the spirit of Tefere Gebre who can trace their political philosophy right back to Samuel Gompers and John L. Lewis and Cesar Chavez. I think that our education unions are quite good, as is UFCW, and that our public employee unions generally are as well, although they are not reliable allies for progressives because they will cut a deal if they can to help their workers (as Nick Beradino of OCEA did in Anaheim in 2012 — and for OCEA it was probably the right move.) Unite HERE may have to do that sometimes as well — they might not have stuck with opposing the hotel subsidies if they’d gotten the concessions they like — but at least there they are literally standing up for workers who might otherwise fall into poverty.

And we also have some of the most pathetic labor leaders I’ve known, in the tradition of the 1970s-era Teamsters who lip-locked themselves to Richard Nixon, celebrated the Vietnam War, and told the left to piss off. Then we have firefighter unions — which I generally like — except when they are mostly focused on getting huge pensions for their highest-placed officials, which is much of the time. And we have police unions who focus too much on protecting bad-acting cops as opposed to protecting cops who whistleblow and are busted for it by their superiors. (I like the latter kind of police union leaders.) And I’m for prison guards unions when they focus on worker protection — but when they just want to fill up the jails to create more JAWWWBS, which again is much of the time, then yes they are the enemy.

Most of the union leaders I see here are somewhere between these extremes. They are essentially like lawyers arguing for their clients. They will ask for as much benefit as possible without regard to whether their cause is just and to what effect it has upon others. And that’s fine — politics like law is, to an extent, and adversary system, and its not a bad thing for workers in a given industry to argue that every resident in a city should be taxed an extra $100 in order to create another ten good-wage jobs, even if that may be bonkers from any objective perspective.

It’s the job of others of us, to whom they try to appeal, to be fair judges. And, as one trying to be a fair judge, when I see socially destructive utter bullshit like the Poseidon ripoff or maintaining San Onofre or expanding the Convention Center without a popular vote or establishing “upper class bypass” toll lanes on the 405, I’m going to say “look, I know that you guys really want more jobs, but in this case the social cost has to outweigh the parochial benefit.” And I do. And if Urizen doesn’t like it … he can go and love himself.

I’ve heard IBEW’s Doug Mangione give the same damned “I’m an FDR Democrat, so I think we need public investment to create jobs” (like he did with the WPA and TVA and such), and I see the logic and appeal of it — and I also see that in our time and place it is simply going to mean stealing money from have-nots to benefit haves. And THAT MAKES UNIONS UNPOPULAR WITH THE PUBLIC. Now, it’s his JOB to make that pitch, and I don’t resent him his paycheck — but the cost is borne largely by OTHER unions and progressive causes. I think that having a sense of proportion and fairness, defending what isn’t a ripoff and opposing what is, is actually BEING VERY SUPPORTIVE of the union movement. When they are seen as ripping off the public, they are hurt in the long run.

When I ran for District Attorney and sought the OC Labor Fed endorsement I made them what I thought was a helpful and truthful pledge: I would make it a priority to enforce the right to collectively bargain, to maintain safe working conditions, and to ensure wage and hour and whistleblower protection and other laws. There’s a huge and nationally influential industry in OC of using shady and bullying tactics to shut down legitimate union organizing — and I wanted to grab it by the throat and wrestle it to the ground until it would FOLLOW THE GODDAMNED LAW. And as DA, I would have done the best I could to make it happen — right up to, as they say, the moment that I was recalled.

THAT’S being support of unions. THAT’S what unions brag about standing for on their web pages and as they represent themselves to the public.

And do you know what those sons of blisters did? They ignored it. ALL they wanted to talk to me about was PROJECTS. Would I support their PROJECTS. I was running for DISTRICT ATTORNEY, remember — not Supervisor or City Council!

I said that I thought that we could find an area of agreement, because I think that we need a massive social investment in infrastructure. Worried about water conservation? We need to proactively repair roads and bridges. We desperately need to reduce the amount of water that leaks from our pipes — much less in domestic use than in commercial use and in water facilities themselves. THAT is giving the public good value.

And do you know what the sons of pustules said?

“Well, that’s good for the unions who work on those sorts of projects, but it doesn’t do much for our unions that, for example, work on finished flooring. They need something like the convention center.”

I think that my answer to that was something like “well, that’s fine, but don’t ask the public to subsidize them just because they want jobs. Give the public what’s good for the public, not what’s just good for you.”

My endorsement was blocked by the frenzied and fire-breathing Building Trades — BECAUSE WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE THEY DON’T REALLY GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE IDEALS OF THE UNION MOVEMENT BUT JUST ABOUT MILKING IT — and I believe that it was only a matter of weeks later that they and Henry Vandermeir (you know, the guy who continually whines about backstabbing and infighting) conspired to get me removed as DPOC Vice Chair after I rejected threats conveyed to me to either drop the challenge to the Convention Center or face the music.

So, Urizen, thanks for giving me reason to tell a story that I think I’ve only danced around in the past — and you can stick your head back up your chickenshit ass. And to answer your question, Vern, I think that I’m very pro-union — pro the sorts of unions that do the sorts of things that we as a society celebrate — although I’m anti-self-serving leeches, whatever the color of their collars. Does that make me anti-union? I sure hope not.

Vern- I am anonymous because my employment demands it. I have intimated that you are a self- hating Democrat, tho nothing like that pathetic pissant on the so-called librul OC. I am saddened that your blog, Greg, and the entire Dem establishment in OC continue to fling feces at each other while lightweights like Gusano and Pedroza babble to larger audiences.

As for the Weekly — of course we can’t compete with an ad- and subsidy-gobbling commercial entity. That’s OK; we fill our niche.

Much of the “Dem establishment in OC” thinks that they are at the mercy of those who think like you do — and they are terrified at the ability of some of us to do more than whine. The changes in Anaheim and in SD-29 were ones that we supported (and helped substantially to make happen) over the opposition of “the Dem establishment.” The left in OC has been willing to be good losers for too long — and we’ve been doing something about it. And you call it “flinging feces”? OK — well, if this is being “self-marginalized,” it seems to suit me just fine. There’s a wonderful core of people in DPOC from whom I am not marginalized — and they, frankly, are our best hopes for future success. If that makes you squirm and gnash and whine, that’s just a side benefit.